Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is the Porter-Cable 9-Inch Pruning Reciprocating Saw Blade. I have always been a fan of using Reciprocating Saws (IE Sawzalls) as a tool for pruning trees or removing small trees where a chain saw would be over kill. It is especially nice for small trees that you want to cut off flush to the ground. They also make a less damaging cut when pruning large branches on fruit trees.

The big thing though is safety. I have used chain saws since I was 12 years old and thank God I have never hurt myself with one. I have seen quite a few injuries though and they are pretty awful. One thing I realized is that these injuries almost never happen when felling large trees, or bucking trees. Then tend to happen when people are doing work on small trees and small slash.

The rule is simple, TWO HANDS ON THE SAW AT ALL TIME THE CHAIN IS MOVING, the end, infinity. But when working with bushy stuff sooner or later the temptation becomes too great, a hand comes off the saw and in time sooner or later flesh and bone meet moving chain. My grandfathers words ring true,

Moving machines and tools have no sympathy, no conscious and no respect for human beings. They don’t care if they are cutting wood and metal or flesh and bone. You are the one with the brain so act like it!

In that spirit many years ago I thought, wow all this little bushy crap doesn’t really need a chain saw. Took out my sawzall and instantly was a convert. If it can be easily cut with a reciprocating saw that is what I use. It is lighter, quieter and safer so why not.

Over the years I tried a lot of different blades, the blade in the video below is just a stock “wood blade”. Most left something to be desired when cutting trees. I found a few good “specialty blades”. They were however expensive and the best one I ever found was the T-Rex Extreme but they went out of business. Trying to make a company on one product is pretty tough!

So one day I decided to give these a whirl and to this day they are the best, highly available and affordable pruning blade I have found. They end up costing about $3.70 a piece and you get a LOT of cutting out of a blade before you need to switch it out. If you look at the tooth pattern it is clear why they work so well, it is very similar to a scaled down bow saw blade.

One of the best uses for this set up is one you don’t really think about until you need to do it. You are digging a trench for say some irrigation pipe and you come across a root, a big root, one that is really hard to cut out with a shovel or a mattock. Are you going to shove your chainsaw down into that dirt and rock mess? Nope but two swift cuts from a sawzall and you just pop it out and move on.

P.S. – If you are in the market for a reciprocating saw I truly do bleed yellow and black Dewalt blood. This is the saw I would recommend, The Dewalt 20V MAX. However it is a bare tool only at 107 meaning you need chargers and batteries so I only recommend it if like me you want to standardize on Dewalt.

I have to admit that the maker of these blades Porter-Cable makes damn decent tools and they have great pricing as well. This set of a Porter-Cable Drill and Sawzall will give you a 20V Saw, a 20V Drill, a Battery and a Charger for about the same cost as the bare Dewalt saw. Is the Dewalt a better tool? Yes. If I didn’t already own Dewalts and needed something for home owner level use, would I say it is that much better? No. Brand loyalty only goes so far.

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Note this video is old, really old, I have lost a lot of weight
and gained a lot of gray hairs since then.

I used a pruning blade, sawzall, and several extension cords to clear limbs and branches after the 2007 Springfield, MO ice storm. It was all anyone in the neighborhood had. It turned into a community event. We’d move the extension cords up the street to the next house that still had power and got paid in goodwill and hot chocolate. 🙂

The real reward was 20 minutes after we were done and talking, an ambulance came up the street that would have been blocked if not for our neighborhood crew. I’d have rather had a chainsaw (and I do now), but we got the job done with what we had.

Another use for these is to break one of the larger blades to about 1, 2 or 3 inches long as required, (using a bench vice to secure the blade and using a strong pliers or hand held vice grips to bend and break the blade at sharp right angles, of course wearing goggles & safety gloves).

Now you have a super powerful jig saw suitable for cutting plasterboard, especially useful if the plasterboard is already wall mounted on wooden batons and you need to cut out sections to access pipes etc.

Jack, I appreciate the informative video man. I never thought about the advantage of having one hand free with the reciprocating saw VS chain saw. I also noticed you have what appears to be a straw coming over your shoulder. Is that one of those water bladder things? Where is the water stored? Is it under the front of your shirt right under your chest? Can you provide product link of the one you use? Thanks Jack!

Jack I appreciate the the response and the link. FYI…I was just joking about the location of the water storage. LOL The only reason I said that is because of the disclaimer above the video about having lost a lot of weight but with more gray hair. I thought what you said was pretty funny. I was completely expecting an email from you tell me I’m an idiot. LOL Anyway brother, I’m going to give this water backpack thing a lookie. I need something like that when going hiking. Roll Tide and HODL